“There is an investment category out there that you likely have a large chunk of your wealth tied up in. The problem though, is that it is literally 11.6 times riskier than ‘cash’… Australian equities also don’t stack up relative to fixed income investments, such as bank bills and government bonds. I am pretty sure one could also add AAA-rated Australian home loans and A1+ corporate debt to the fixed-income outperformers…”

It was his ‘bombshell’ moment. The ‘revelation’ that investing in shares is a risky game. Thanks for the info!

Shares are risky, but not property. Investing in property and residential mortgages is much safer apparently. In fact, according to Joye’s ‘bookend’ appearance on the SBS show Insight:

“We had 11.1% house price growth in 2009. House prices have continued rising in the first month of the year – in January. Melbourne experienced 16% house price growth last year and then Sydney also experienced around 11% house price growth. The national housing shortage is estimated to be around 200,000 homes… ANZ project that will be 400,000 homes by 2015.”

And the price pressure is on the up:

“We will have a 62% increase in our population. We are looking at 7 to 8 million people living in Sydney and Melbourne individually. One of the concerns I have is the 36 million forecast is very conservative. It assumes our population growth rate today halves so it will place huge pressure on prices.”

It’s the typical spruikers mantra. A population increase means more demand for houses which means higher house prices, which means, ‘Buy now before it’s too late!’

By the way, we’ve referred to it as a ‘bookend’ appearance because El Joye was asked one question at the beginning and then one at the end. And that was it. But in just a few words he managed to express almost every property myth there is.

Hats off to him for having the argument so fine-tuned that it can be rolled out under any circumstances. Even on the occasion when you’re just asked two questions during a one-hour show.

Anyway, we thought it was about time we looked at the Transforming America’s Housing Policy conference that was held at New York University in February 2009.

We thought we’d look at it because it’s the conference that El Joye has banged on about ever since, usually with statements such as, “While presenting to the Obama Administration alongside Robert Shiller last year…”

It’s obviously an appearance he’s proud of. You can tell that by the number of times he mentions it.

It was Joye’s opportunity to show the Americans how fab the Australian housing market is. And how, if only they’d done things the same way as us then everything would be fine.

So, yesterday afternoon, we settled back to listen and watch the video recording of the panel discussion that included Robert Shiller (or ‘Bob’ as Joye referred to him), Raphael Bostic, Eric Stein, and of course Christopher Joye.

Click here to watch and listen for yourself. It’s discussion Panel 4.

Only a few minutes in and it was pleasing to hear Robert ‘Bob’ Shiller say:

“This financial crisis was caused by a failure to manage real estate risk. We put people… no matter how low income… into a leveraged position in local real estate. Highly leveraged, and if they’re low income, with their entire life savings. It’s hard to believe it, but that was the conventional wisdom… Larry White was saying… people had this strange idea that home prices only go up, and he couldn’t fathom how people would have thought that…”

Sound familiar? Ask any spruiker or property investor and they’ll tell you, you’ll always make money on property because prices always go up.

Even the feedback we received from yesterday’s Money Morning article, readers told us our example was wrong because we should allow for property doubling in value every ten years.

And that was from readers who class themselves as property bears. The idea that housing doubles in value every ten years and that it always goes up is brainwashed into almost every Australian.

We don’t take into account property doubling in the next ten years because we don’t believe it will happen.

The fact is, the idea that property is guaranteed to double in seven or ten years is a lie. Property is not a magical investment that can be detached from every other investment. It is inherently risky. But look, don’t take my word for it, just ask Christopher Joye how risky property is…

“What?” I hear you ask. Yep, straight up. Here’s a quote from El Joye I’ve taken from the video I mentioned above. And if you don’t believe me, watch for yourself. El Joye starts babbling on at about the 20-minute mark:

“Our research shows the single family home is a phenomenally risky investment. It’s around six-times the risk of a broad based property index. In Australia the single family home has around a 20% volatility, so volatility akin to equities and yet the average family invests 50% to 60% of all their wealth in the world in this highly idiosyncratic asset… The system [financial markets] had too much leverage, and particularly households had geared to high levels… They’re leveraging against what is an incredibly risky underlying asset.”

Got that? We nearly fell off our $99 Officeworks chair when we heard those words. We finally have an admission from El Joye that residential housing is a “phenomenally risky investment” and an “incredibly risky underlying asset.”

Well, well, well. Who’d have thought it? An admission that confirms everything we’ve said about residential property for the last eighteen months.

That residential property has been bid up to such a high level, and that the leverage is so enormous, it has burdened Australian households with a “phenomenally risky investment.”

It confirms exactly what we wrote a few months ago, that property is now at least just as risky as share investing – and we know how risky that is.

But because of our comments and our busting of the conventional wisdom myth, your editor has received a barrage of abuse from Joye and his property investing cronies. All of it claiming that your editor is a liar for saying that property investing is risky.

Yet all along, Christopher Joye was completely aware that in February 2009 he himself labelled the family home as a “phenomenally risky investment.” That’s taken the wordage even further than us.

And remember, he’s stating that a family home is a “phenomenally risky investment.” He’s not referring to investment properties or commercial real estate, he clearly states the “family home.”

And despite all this, El Joye and the other property spruiking bandits insist residential housing is a safe investment. An investment where prices always rise. An investment which according to his recent article, is less risky than shares.

But I’ll let you figure out what words you want to apply to someone who states one thing to an American audience and then states the opposite to Australian home owners.

If you ask me it’s a downright shameful disgrace.

All I can say is, how convenient it is to tell the truth when you’re trying to sell an idea to an American audience. An audience that has already experienced a housing crash and therefore the Joye solution will supposedly help prevent it happening again – or make it worse in our opinion.

Whereas to the Australian audience, well, the crash hasn’t happened yet. Joye wouldn’t want to ruffle anyone’s feathers. And besides, the money in the Australian market is to be made selling research to fund managers and the real estate industry.

Those customers won’t be best pleased if El Joye starts talking about housing being a “phenomenally risky investment” or a “risky underlying asset.” That’s not the way to keep dollars flowing through the door.

Look, I can’t believe it’s taken your editor over a year to come across this gem. Maybe others have spotted it, but we can’t say we’ve noticed.

Yesterday I said that Joye’s credibility was in negative territory, well, after viewing this video, in our opinion his credibility has gone off the scale and through the floor.

So far, Jason Clout at the Australian Financial Review (AFR) is the only mainstream journo to call Joye out for having soggy numbers. We can only hope that the mainstream journos really do start to take everything that Joye says with a gigantic pinch of salt.

The next time we see Joye interviewed we’ll hope to see the journo ask him to explain what he means by Australian family homes being a “phenomenally risky investment.”

It’s about time the mainstream press stopped thinking of Chris Joye as an independent objectively minded real estate analyst. The reality is that he’s a spruiker with a vested interest in keeping the property bubble going for as long as possible.

And then, when it pops, he’ll turn up like a white knight saying, “Have I got a solution for you!”

Can you trust another word Christopher Joye writes? And of equal importance, does the mainstream press have the balls to finally challenge what he says?

Let’s wait and see.

Cheers.
Kris.

Eagle-eyed Money Morning reader Gary sent us this link to The Australian:

“Homeless figures are ‘distorting housing shortage’”

Nice work. It’s just a shame we revealed that fact back on August 24th last year when we wrote, “Revealed: The Housing Shortage Lie.”

In the article we quoted from the ‘National Housing Supply Council State of Supply Report 2008.’ It contained the following passage which simply blew us away:

“The Council estimates that a minimum of around 85,000 dwellings is the gap (unmet need) in the supply of housing in 2008. This is based on the incidence of homelessness and the low level of vacancy rates in the private rental market.”

That’s right, as we pointed out in August, and as The Australian newspaper pointed out last week, the housing shortage crisis is based purely and simply on the number of homeless people.

But we won’t get too excited about the possibility of the mainstream media mending their ways. Because right on cue, last Thursday the same newspaper gave you, “House prices soar 12pc amid recovery.”

Ah, the good old days are back. Amusingly the article finishes with the line, “RP Data said the figures released on Friday were likely to provide a far more conservative view of market conditions.”

Ha, ha, the arch spruikers trying to keep a lid on things. Love it.

And indeed RP Data did produce a “more conservative” number. It claims national dwelling values were down 0.3% during December.

But not surprisingly, the report is another hodge-podge of confusion. Take a look at their latest press release to see if you can make head or tail of it.

But perhaps the best bit of spruiking was in a little noticed article on Business Spectator, titled “Housing affordability steady over 6 years: Rismark.”

The article by a “staff reporter” states:

“The perception that housing is becoming less affordable is untrue, according to a new housing index which indicates affordability has remained steady or even fallen over the last six years. Investment strategy firm Rismark Australia has released a new index that shows median house prices remained between 3.7 and 4.3 times disposable income over the last six years. Currently, the index has median house prices at 4.1 times household disposable income, while it was 4.2 times disposable income at the end of last year.”

If only the guys at Demographia knew this they wouldn’t have bothered releasing a report that claims Australia’s houses are the most unaffordable in the world ever.

And it flies in the face of the latest research from Fujitsu Consulting which claims that by the end of 2010 “747,000 households [will be] in some degree of discomfort and those in severe stress perhaps as high as 307,000; with around 40,000 defaults annually.”

We don’t know the guys at Demographia and Fujitsu Consulting from a bar of soap, but we’re happy to give their research some airplay. If it achieves nothing else it will help to balance out the pap you’re constantly bombarded with by the mainstream press.

But back to the Business Spectator article. We do love Rismark for their balls. If they don’t like the numbers given by someone else then they go away and make up their own numbers. And voila! House prices are cheap.

Anyway, we’d love to know how Rismark came by their figures, because as usual none of it makes any sense.

The article states: “In the meantime, the rise in median house prices has been lower, at 41 per cent, from $270,000, to $380,000.”

Oh yeah? Here’s a screenshot from the RP Data homepage early last week:

And here’s the screenshot following the release of their December numbers:

In neither case is the national median house price anywhere near $380,000. Although we’re not quite sure why Rismark even references the median price anyway, seeing as they’re so scornful of it.

So, we’ll ignore the $380,000 number and instead look at RP Data’s median price of $451,000.

Anyway, Christopher Joye repeats the claim about the income to house price ratio in the RP Data press release:

“It pays to remember that the price of Australian homes is only around 4.1 times disposable household incomes, which has been unchanged since September 2003. This tells us that over the last six years Australian house price have very closely tracked changes in household incomes. Contrary to popular myth, Australia’s house price-to-income ratio is not unusually high, nor has it risen in recent times.”

Really? Well let’s take a look at that shall we.

Based on the number from Joye that “Australian homes is only around 4.1 times disposable household income”, if we use the number from RP Data’s own website that would mean the household disposable income is $110,000.

Remember, that’s after tax and after the Medicare Levy. It would suggest a monthly cash income of $9,166, or $2,115 per week.

So, the first question we can ask is whether we think that’s believable?

For a start it isn’t clear whether they’re referring to median or mean income. So we’ll let’s look at the median first. Using Rismark’s 4.1 times numer, that would mean if you line up the individual disposable household incomes for every household in Australia, the number in the middle would be $110,000.

Half the households would have a lower income and half would be higher.

But here’s where it gets problematic. Because if we refer to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Household Income and Income Distribution report for 2007-08, the median gross – not disposable mind you – household weekly income would be somewhere in the range of $1,200 to $1,399.

So even if we take the top of the range of $1,399 that still only puts the before tax annual household disposable income at $72,748, a full $37,252 below Rismark’s supposed after tax number of $110,000.

But let’s look at it this way. If we take Rismark’s $2,062 household disposable income figure, then according to the ABS data even if we assumed the household paid no tax they would still be in the top 20% of household incomes.

So that clearly can’t be the median.

If we then use the same ABS gross numbers to see where it pinpoints the median, well, it’s a whole different story…

Based on a split of households, the median gross household income per week falls somewhere between $1,200 and $1,399. So, to be fair, let’s split the difference and say the median gross household income in 2008 was $1,300.

Now remember, this is gross. So you’d think the Rismark net number should be less than that. But it’s not. In fact, using Rismark’s assumptions, the disposable income would be about 50% higher than the ABS’s recorded gross household income.

That just doesn’t make sense.

But let’s be kind to Rismark and say that perhaps due to a bunch of tax breaks and some – hehem – creative accounting, the ABS’s median household managed to get away without paying any tax so their disposable income was the same as the gross: $1,300.

Annualise that and you’ve got a “disposable” income of $67,600.

Compare that to RP Data’s national median house price of $451,000 and you can draw your own conclusion.

But to help you out, that works out as 6.67 times household income, not 4.1 times.

Somewhere there’s a problem with the numbers.

Even if we remove all the incomes that receive government benefits then the median still only comes in at $1,634 per week or $84,968. And remember, that’s gross income, not household disposable income.

That gives you a median house price of 5.3 times median gross incomes.

Now, Mr. Joye does claim that their income numbers include all sources of income, not just wages. He claims it includes investment income as well.

But the ABS numbers also do that. And still it doesn’t come close to his 4.1 times.

Even if we use the higher mean average of $2,007 per week that would still only give a gross – not a disposable – income of $104,364 per year. That still puts housing at 4.33 times gross income.

So even if we’re being kind, the disposable income figure is going to be around $85,000 per year, making house prices 5.3 times income.

Whichever way you slice and dice this, you can’t seriously come up with a disposable income of $110,000.

But what about this research from Demographia. It paints an even worse picture. According to their housing affordability numbers, they’ve got Sydney house prices at 9.1 times median gross household income, and Melbourne at 8 times median gross household income.

That makes both cities “Severely Unaffordable.”

However, we will point out one tiny fly in the Demographia ointment. Naturally enough, they use the median household gross income for the entire country, yet they’ve used median house prices for specific cities.

Clearly that’s not going to provide a completely accurate picture as we can assume the median income in Sydney will be higher than the median income in Dubbo or Newcastle. Although of course it’s always dangerous to assume.

So in that respect we’ll probably argue that the 9.1 times figure for Sydney overstates the true picture. But by the same token, there’s no way it’s anywhere near the 4.1 the spruikers at Rismark claim.

Our figure of somewhere between 5 times and 7 times is probably as close as you’ll get to an accurate figure.

But even so. Even if we forget about what the 9.1 times figure refers to, just the comparison to other cities is enough to tell you that Australian house prices are heading for a monumental crash.

And how about the Fujitsu Consulting research [Ed note: click on the link and enter your details. Fujitsu will email the report to you]. That report indicates 200,000 households in Australia are experiencing ’severe’ mortgage stress.

And remember, it forecasts that number to increase by 50% by the end of this year.

But let me draw your attention to the image below. The blue line indicates the ’severe’ stress levels and the yellow line is the RBA cash rate:

The interesting point to note is that the number of households forecast to be in severe stress by the end of this year will be roughly the same as those that were in stress when the RBA had interest rates above 7%.

Yet forecasts are that the RBA will only increase rates to around 6% by the end of this year.

It’s a perfect example of how the ‘normal’ interest rate levels have been distorted by artificially low interest rates. So that all the first home buyers who were suckered in with bribes and low interest rates will start to face ’severe’ mortgage stress at a much lower interest rate level than previously.

However you look at it, trying to claim that house prices are only 4.1 times the median household disposable income is just pushing things that little too far.

Doubtless Rismark are using a hedonic incomes index with a fancy formula which will ‘prove’ they’re right. But what it probably means is that your income is recorded as higher if your neighbour happens to get a pay rise!

We wouldn’t put it past them.

Cheers.
Kris.

Spruiker extraordinaire Christopher Joye has written a blog for Business Spectator criticising our comments on property. You can read it here. However, in typical spruiker fashion it completely ignores our questions and instead trots out the same tired claims.

We’ve got plenty more to write on property over the next few weeks. But until then, how about they answer the simple questions we’ve put to them:

• Proof that there is a housing shortage.
• Proof that the Australian property market didn’t crash because 64% of the Australian population lives in a handful of cities.
• Proof that property prices double every 7-10 years.
• Proof that rising immigration causes house prices to rise.
• A genuine worked example of the Hedonic Index.

Property spruikers can leave answers to these questions on the Money Morning website under this article (when it’s posted) or any of the recent articles.

If the spruikers are that certain over their claims they shouldn’t have any trouble providing the evidence. Saying that, four months after we first asked, we’ve still not received an answer to point four.

Anyway, enough of the property malarkey for today. Back to our…

It’s harder to be a contrarian investor than you’d think. At first glance, you’d think being a contrarian just involves doing the opposite to everyone else.

It’s a nice idea, unfortunately it’s also a quick way to the poor house.

As any swimmer will tell you, it’s tough to swim against a rip. Rather than swim against it you should swim across it until you’re back in calmer water.

That’s almost the idea with contrarian investing. You don’t try to resist the hoards that are following the crowd, instead you calmly and carefully work your way into a position so that you’re ready to go in the opposite direction when the time is right.

Depending on the investment, the idea is to set yourself up for the turning point. So it’s not so much that you’re constantly betting against everyone else, but rather that you’re one of the leaders as the market turns.

For instance, if you had started to bet against the stock market in mid 2006 as the index fell by 10%, you may have picked up some short term gains, but in little over a year later you’d have racked up over a 30% loss.

Unless you had enough capital to keep your position open you could have missed out by the time your bet would have started to pay dividends.

That said, there is one contrarian investment where you don’t have to sit back and wait. You know the one I’m referring to – Gold.

Yes that’s right, despite what the mainstream press are telling you, gold is still a contrarian investment.

Sure, the price of gold has skyrocketed over the last year or so, and sure the price of gold could be in a mini bubble, but the fact remains that the investment buyers of gold are still in the extreme minority.

The mainstream press thinks that gold is in a price bubble because of gold parties and because of the gold merchants opening up stalls in shopping malls.

The only problem is they’ve got their bubbles in a twist. All this proves is that people are selling gold, not buying it.

And you only have to look at those stories again to see that’s what makes it a ‘buyers market.’ Because sellers are dumping valuable gold in exchange for devalued cash at well below market prices.

I would agree that gold is in a bubble if these merchants were paying market or above market prices. I would agree gold is in a bubble if these merchants were falling over themselves to pay the best rate on the market, bidding the gold price higher and higher.

But they’re not. It’s hardly a bubble when punters are selling below market price.

That’s because the fact is very few average punters know the real value of gold. They are happy to sell gold when it is at AUD$1,200 per ounce, fearful that it could fall to AUD$900 per ounce.

They then use their AUD$1,200 to buy a plasma television, or a new piece of furniture, or spend it on a holiday, all of which will have either no value or almost no value in five years time. Compared with gold which has retained its value over thousands of years and will do so for another five years and even better than that, for thousands more years.

Go to an average investment adviser and you’ll get less than average advice on gold. They’ll probably tell you not to touch it because “you can’t eat it and you can’t wear it, so it’s not worth anything.”

We love that argument from the gold bears. We simply respond with, “So I take it you’re fond of eating and wearing $50 notes are you?”

It soon has them blubbering, searching for a sensible reply.

Anyway, I’ve got no idea what the price of gold will be in six months or one year’s time. But what I do know, is that as an unleveraged ‘wealth insurance’ policy there’s little around that beats it.

The important point is not to necessarily look at gold as a method of getting rich. Although you can certainly do that if you consistently buy at the right price. The way I prefer to look at it is as a wealth protector.

Buying up small amounts at regular intervals. Swapping out of devalued paper money in exchange for an asset with real value makes a lot of sense to me. And because it’s unleveraged and because you’re using surplus funds you shouldn’t feel the pressure to sell if the price does take a dip.

Now, let’s take a look at our second contrarian investment idea for 2010. In some ways this is another wealth protector rather than a wealth generator. It’s to sell the Australian dollar.

As you can see from the AUD/USD chart below, the Australian dollar has put in a tremendous run during the past year:

And just as there was talk of the Aussie dollar reaching parity with the US dollar in 2008, so the same claims are being made now.

Will that happen? We can’t know for sure, but we can guess that if enough big FX players have enough interest in making it happen in the short term then there’s certainly a chance it could happen.

But to my mind, there’s much more profit on the downside than there is for profit on the upside.

The trouble is, if you’re selling the Australian dollar what are you going to buy? After all, a currency trade has two sides. If you’re selling out of Australian dollars you have to buy another currency.

And do you really want to put your cash into US dollars? For a start you’re not getting a yield (or not much of one anyway), so it will actually cost you to buy US dollars – simply because you’re giving up the opportunity of earning interest on Aussie dollars.

Also, there is an argument that because the US is still a dominant world economy, should the worst happen and the global economy melts down again, investors will naturally flow towards economies that are perceived as being lower risk.

Despite the mountain of debt the US is weighed down by, there is still a perception among investors that the US is a safe haven investment.

But perhaps a better option is to look at an economy that while it isn’t perfect, would seem to hold less risk than a US dollar investment – Japan.

So your second contrarian investment idea for 2010 is to sell Australian dollars and buy Japanese Yen.

When you look at the five-year chart above it goes without saying there’s plenty of risk to this idea. The Aussie dollar has gained by 50% during 2009, but it is still about another 20% from the high reached in late 2007.

The Aussie dollar could go either way against the Yen. It could in fact reach the ¥100 level from 2007.

So for this contrarian idea you’ve got two options. If you’re convinced the Aussie dollar is over-valued and that it will eventually retreat well below this level then you could tuck in now. However, if you’re using leverage then you should be prepared to take some pain if the Aussie dollar strengthens further.

Or you could take the cautious approach and look for a breakdown in the trend. As I mentioned above, being contrarian isn’t just about taking the opposite bet to everyone else.

To be a successful contrarian you need to watch your timing. So although selling the Aussie dollar and buying the Japanese Yen is a contrarian idea for 2010, as of today it’s a super high risk trade.

If you don’t have the stomach for that kind of risk then you should stay clear for now and bide your time.

The third contrarian investment idea for 2010 would be to short sell the Australian property market. Although I’ll admit this isn’t easy.

The best way would be to short sell an index or to buy put options on an index. That way you can spread your exposure across a number of stocks and property types.

An alternative to that is to pick a property related ASX stock that can be short sold. Here you’ve got two choices. Either you plump for an actual property stock or you go for the banks.

Either way you’re getting as close as you’re going to get to an exposure to the property market.

But again, this isn’t a risk free trade. We’ve seen how much effort the property industry, financial services sector and the government have put in to propping up the housing market. And we know that betting against property is not in the psyche of most Australians.

But we know the bubble can’t last, it’s just a question of when it pops, not if. But if you’re relying on our advice for timing, just remember we thought the Aussie housing market would collapse in a heap last year! But it hasn’t happened yet.

This is most definitely a punters trade. And it’s definitely one that you don’t want to be betting against the combined might of the banks and the property industry. So the timing is important here.

So rather than short selling, a less risky way but which involves a higher upfront cost is to look at longer dated put options on the banks and property stocks – such as Westfield Group [ASX: WDC].

The advantage with put options is that your downside risk is known up front. If the trade moves against you then the most you can possibly lose is the premium you’ve paid.

But the longer away the expiry date and the closer the exercise price is to the current price, the more you’ll pay for the premium.

In that case – as an example, and just remember this isn’t personal advice – you could look at taking out a long dated put option with a strike price of $10 on a stock like Westfield Group. Westfield is currently trading at $12.63 so you’d need it to fall a fair way to be assured of making any money. But as an out and out longer term punt it’s not a bad idea.

The theoretical price of the option is 31 cents per share – or $310 for one contract, but the actual price is likely to be a bit higher than that. You should check with your broker to be sure.

As I said, you shouldn’t take this as personal financial advice. But it certainly fits in with our big picture view of what could happen to the Australian market and economy over the next twelve months.

But as I mentioned above, for the Aussie dollar and property trade it’s all about timing.

Whereas for gold, it’s an investment you could make almost any day of the week without having to worry.

Anyway, that’s our three contrarian ideas for 2010. If you’ve any better ideas then just wait for this article to be posted to the Money Morning website later on this afternoon and then you can let other readers know how you’d play it as a contrarian in 2010.

Cheers.
Kris.

60-Second Market Round Up
by Shae Smith

The S&P/ASX 200 ended the trading day up by 12 points to close at 4,912.10. The Australian market has opened up higher this morning. Keep an eye out this week for the November lending finance data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The report is due out on Wednesday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the day higher, up by 11 points to close at 10,618.19.

The American jobless report was released on Friday morning their time. The report noted that 85,000 jobs were cut in December, but the jobless rate has remained steady at 10%. Read more from the report here.

Overnight in the UK, the FTSE was up by 7 points, closing at 5,534.24

The Nikkei hit a 15 month high on Friday. The index closed at 10,798.32, higher by 1.09%. Overall for the week the Nikkei had gained 2.4%.

Gold was up as a result of the weak jobless data coming from the US. Read more here.

The price of spot gold in Australian dollars is trading at $1,231.05 while in US Dollars it is trading at $1,138.30. The price of silver in Aussie dollars is $19.94 and in US Dollars it is $18.44.

The Aussie dollar versus the US dollar is trading at USD$0.9284, and against the Japanese Yen JPY86.02

Crude Oil was up slightly, closing at USD$82.75

For the biggest movers on the market yesterday click here…